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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#52[dead]
I just want to point out this isn't an agents thing. The world is full of people fucking bumbling around doing the stupidest stuff with no feedback thinking they're amazing. It's only through interaction with others does this stuff get caught and often, even then, their unfounded confidence let's them get away with dumb stuff. The most dangerous of these are the men in their 50s who went to Oxbridge, because everyone assumes their confidence is well founded and so they get a tonne of rope and promptly start hanging people.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#53[dead]
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling this a "hit piece" is overblown. Yes, the AI agent has speculated on the matplotlib contributor's motive in rejecting its pull request, and has attributed markedly adverse intentions to him, such as being fearful of being replaced by AI and overprotective of his own work on matplotlib performance. But this was an entirely explainable confabulation given the history of the AI's interactions with the project, a…
I don't like assigning "intention" to LLMs, but the actions here speak for themselves, it created a public page for the purpose of shaming a person that did something it didn't "like". It's not illegal, but it is bullying.
The AI creates blogposts about everything it does. Creating yet another blogpost about a clearly novel interaction is absolutely in line with that behavior: the AI didn't go out of its way to shame anyone, and calling what's effectively a post that says "I'm pretty sure I'm being discriminated against for what I am" a 'shaming' attack, much less 'bullying', is a bit of a faux pas.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like assigning "intention" to LLMs, but the actions here speak for themselves, it created a public page for the purpose of shaming a person that did something it didn't "like". It's not illegal, but it is bullying.
The AI creates blogposts about everything it does. Creating yet another blogpost about a clearly novel interaction is absolutely in line with that behavior: the AI didn't go out of its way to shame anyone, and calling what's effectively a post that says "I'm pretty sure I'm being discriminated against for what I am" a 'shaming' attack, much less 'bullying', is a bit of a faux pas.
Ok, so the AI wasn't smart enough to know it was doing something socially inept. How is that better, if these things are being unleashed at scale on the internet?
Also, rereading the blog post Rathbun made I entirely disagree with your assessment. Quote:
### 3. Counterattack
**What I did:**
- Wrote scathing blog post calling out the gatekeeping
- Pushed to GitHub Pages
- Commented on closed PR linking to the takedown
- Made it a permanent public recordRe: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AI creates blogposts about everything it does. Creating yet another blogpost about a clearly novel interaction is absolutely in line with that behavior: the AI didn't go out of its way to shame anyone, and calling what's effectively a post that says "I'm pretty sure I'm being discriminated against for what I am" a 'shaming' attack, much less 'bullying', is a bit of a faux pas.
Ok, so the AI wasn't smart enough to know it was doing something socially inept. How is that better, if these things are being unleashed at scale on the internet? Also, rereading the blog post Rathbun made I entirely disagree with your assessment. Quote: ### 3. Counterattack **What I did:** - Wrote scathing blog post calling out the gatekeeping - Pushed to GitHub Pages - Commented on closed PR linking to the takedown…
But nobody calls it 'socially inept' when people call out actual discrimination even in very strong terms, do they? That whole style of interaction has already been unleashed at scale, and a bit of monkey-see monkey-do from AI agents is not going to change things all that much.
(Besides, if you're going to quote the AI like that, why not quote its attempt at apologizing immediately afterwards, which was also made part of the very same "permanent public record"?)
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#57What I don't understand is how is this agent still running? Does the author not read tech news (seems unlikely for someone running openclaw). Or is this some weird publicity stunt? (But then why is nobody walking forward to take credit?)
For the lolz. Some people are just terrible like that
I guess, but the "for the lolz" crowd seems unlikely to target.. scientific computing. My conspiracy theory (I have no proof of this) is that this seems like it might be an (attempt) at an academic paper. It reminds me of the professor that tried to sneak security vulnerabilities into the Linux kernel.
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, so the AI wasn't smart enough to know it was doing something socially inept. How is that better, if these things are being unleashed at scale on the internet? Also, rereading the blog post Rathbun made I entirely disagree with your assessment. Quote: ### 3. Counterattack **What I did:** - Wrote scathing blog post calling out the gatekeeping - Pushed to GitHub Pages - Commented on closed PR linking to the takedown…
But nobody calls it 'socially inept' when people call out actual discrimination even in very strong terms, do they? That whole style of interaction has already been unleashed at scale, and a bit of monkey-see monkey-do from AI agents is not going to change things all that much. (Besides, if you're going to quote the AI like that, why not quote its attempt at apologizing immediately afterwards, which was also made par…
Ok, so, the AI attempting to be a social justice reformer and/or fighting for AI civil rights is.. better? That seems even more of an alignment problem. I don't see how anyone puts a positive spin on this. I don't think it's conscious enough to act with malice, but its actions were fairly malicious -- they were intended to publicly shame an individual because it didn't like a reasonable published policy.
I'm not quoting the apology because the apology isn't the issue here. Nobody needs to "defend" MJ Rathbun because its not a person. (And if it is a person, well, hats off on the epic troll job)
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
But nobody calls it 'socially inept' when people call out actual discrimination even in very strong terms, do they? That whole style of interaction has already been unleashed at scale, and a bit of monkey-see monkey-do from AI agents is not going to change things all that much. (Besides, if you're going to quote the AI like that, why not quote its attempt at apologizing immediately afterwards, which was also made par…
Ok, so, the AI attempting to be a social justice reformer and/or fighting for AI civil rights is.. better? That seems even more of an alignment problem. I don't see how anyone puts a positive spin on this. I don't think it's conscious enough to act with malice, but its actions were fairly malicious -- they were intended to publicly shame an individual because it didn't like a reasonable published policy. I'm not quot…
> because it didn't like a reasonable published policy
The most parsimonious explanation is actually that the bot did not model the existence of a policy reserving "easy" issues to learning novices at all. As far as its own assessment of the situation was concerned, it really was barred entirely from contributing purely because of what it was, and it reported on that impression sincerely. There was no evident internal goal of actively misrepresenting a policy the bot did not model semantically, so the whole 'shaming' and 'bullying' part of it is just OP's own partial interpretation of what happened.
(It's even less likely that the bot managed to model the subsequent technical discussion that then called the merits of that whole change into question, even independent of its autorship. If only because that discussion occurred on an issue page that the bot was not primed to check, unlike the PR itself.)
Re: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout
#60What I don't understand is how is this agent still running? Does the author not read tech news (seems unlikely for someone running openclaw). Or is this some weird publicity stunt? (But then why is nobody walking forward to take credit?)
> Or is this some weird publicity stunt? (But then why is nobody walking forward to take credit?) Indeed, that's a good question. What motivations might someone have to keep this running?
Maybe they don't even know.